Redemption
by StarkLady
Summary: Jaime Lannister is in the Black Cells, a prisoner of the newly crowned Queen Daenerys Targaryen, who intends to execute him for the murder of her father. The Hand of the Queen, Tyrion Lannister, reluctantly turns to an enemy of their house in order to save his brother.
1. A Dream in the Darkness

Jaime Lannister was no longer sure how long he had been in the darkness. In the Black Cells, time quickly lost all meaning. Tyrion had visited him on what he had said was the fifth day, promising to return the following morning. But how long ago had that been? A day? A week? Then again perhaps it had only been a matter of hours.

Jaime was not sure if he had been given food since then or not. That was how he had intended to keep track of his days, but he suspected the dragon bitch intentionally had the thin, bland gruel sent at irregular intervals to prevent such marking of time.

In truth, though, he knew it mattered little if she had. It was the nothingness of darkness and isolation that played tricks on one's mind, distorting time beyond all recognition and rendering the sequence of events unintelligible.

A strange consequence, he thought, considering the utter lack of events. Occasionally a silent hooded figure carrying a painfully bright torch would bring whatever the new queen had decided to pass off as food, and Tyrion had visited one time.

His brother had talked and then talked some more, explanations and apologies dripping meaninglessly from his tongue. Jaime had understood little of what was said and spoken even less in return, his throat dry and raw with the near constant lack of water.

The fifth day, Tyrion had said. Or had it been the fifteenth? Jaime could not remember the exact words. The only solid fact he held from the visit was the empty promise from his imp of a brother. He had not come back.

However, Jaime had dreamed of him, lack of sleep being one thing he did not suffer from. Tyrion returned in the dream with a message of hope, proclaiming a woman would soon come to the Black Cells, and if Jaime spoke the truth, she would know. And she would save him.

He thought he had seen her once. An ethereal figure with pale skin and dark hair had appeared. She spoke not a single word, only staring at him until he had felt his soul laid bare. In his mind, she was the Goddess of Death, beautiful and ageless. Jaime had been drawn to her as a moth to a flame, risking its life for the hope of light and warmth. He raised his left arm, reaching, wanting to feel her touch. If he had possessed enough strength, he would have stood and given himself over to her. Death at her hands surely would have been preferable to this living hell.

But then his eyes had faltered for a moment under her unrelenting gaze, and when he opened them, awakening from the dream, she had been gone. The realization she was nothing more than a figment of his imagination had left a sudden, painful void inside him.

The memory of the mysterious woman haunted him. The icy, steel grey of her knowing eyes. The sensuous curve of her lips. The flawless porcelain of her skin. The cascading waves of her dark brown hair. She was the opposite of him. She was the opposite of Cersei. And Jaime had never desired anything more than to see a vision of her again.


	2. The Hand Waits

Tyrion Lannister looked at the mattress when he entered the dimly lit room, his mind wandering for a fleeting moment as he pictured one of the women from downstairs lying naked upon it. As quickly as the image appeared, he pushed it away. Since returning to King's Landing, he had visited the brothels only a handful of times, each for business rather than pleasure, and though he was not averse to changing that fact, he knew now was not the time to even contemplate such thoughts.

Moving as quickly as his short limbs allowed, he closed and locked the door, securing the deadbolt as well, and then made his way across the room toward a small wooden table upon which someone had placed a flagon of wine and two empty glasses. He ignored the offering with a heavy sigh and sat in a nearby chair plump with overstuffed cushions. One could never be too careful, especially in this city , he thought as he pulled out his own flask and drank deeply.

As the minutes passed by, Tyrion began to doubt the girl would show. After all, she had no reason to help him, not really. Even though he had given her some assistance when they had first met nearly a year ago, he had sworn to ask nothing in return. "A Lannister always pays his debts," he had said, figuring he owed her something for all his family had taken from her.

By the time his flask ran dry, Tyrion had convinced himself that the girl had decided to betray him and reveal his plotting to the Queen. Daenerys wanted Jaime dead and made no secret of the fact. She preferred an immediate execution, but Tyrion had talked her into prolonging his brothers life by letting him suffer in the Black Cells for a while first. Tyrion had served faithfully as the Hand of the Queen since she had given him the honor of the position, and he intended to continue his service. But this was Jaime. His brother. The last friend he'd had in Westeros. The man who had once saved him from the executioner's block. A Lannister always pays his debts. Always.

The girl had said she would considering helping but could make no promises until she spoke with Jaime and found out the truth of his actions. Seeing no other option, Tyrion had trusted her the knowledge of his intent to free his brother, but increasingly he worried that she would decide to put an end to his family once and for all. Cersei was dead, strangled as she sat on the Iron Throne, and now Tyrion had served himself and Jaime to the girl on a golden platter. He could not even blame her. She deserved vengeance, if anyone ever had.

So he waited, strangely content to let things play out according to the will and possible whims of a young woman who had every reason to hate his house and no reason to do anything other than destroy it.

He watched the shadows change as darkness crept across the sky. At least a couple hours had passed. Eventually Tyrion slid out of the chair, stretching as he lit a nearby candle and inhaled its faint scent of lavender. He had just returned to his seat when a cool draft of air swept across the room.

Soundlessly, a lean figure dressed in dark grey robes appeared, coming from the shadows and moving as though it belonged to the darkness. Tyrion felt a mild curiosity about exactly where the secret passage was located, but that was quickly overshadowed by the intense surge of relief that she had come and that Daenerys was not with her.

His breath hitched, though, and his pulse quickened when the candlelight hit her face. With her smooth ivory skin, dark hair, and pale eyes, she was beautiful, breathtaking even. However, it was not her beauty that made him uncomfortable.

When he had first seen her, the girl had displayed a disturbing lack of emotion. Hatred had flashed in her eyes for brief moments, and he'd caught a glimpse of a wry smile or two. After the battle for King's Landing, though, when the last name had been stricken from the girl's list, even those rare expressions vanished, her large grey eyes void of all feeling, seemingly eternally vacant. Sometimes he'd wondered if there was anything human left in her.

As Arya Stark stood before him now, though, he saw something . Not the hatred that had been there previously. Nothing that he could name at all. But there was something. He was certain of it, and he was beyond frightened by it.


	3. A Return to the Past

The Black Cells were cold, the stone floor being especially fucking frigid in Jaime's opinion. He shifted his weight, hoping to find that one elusive position that would somehow be more comfortable than the others. The brief search ended in futility, as he'd known it would, with every inch of the floor just as cruelly painful as every other. A shiver coursed through his weakened body, and Jaime gave up, lying still, eyes shut tightly and arms wrapped across his chest as he waited for sleep.

He had quickly learned it was best to keep his eyes closed as much as possible. His mind accepted the darkness better that way. He could be anyone. He could be anywhere. Just a man in darkened room, trying to sleep. But when he forgot, allowing his eyes to open, even for the briefest of moments, the nothingness, the intensity of the void around him, would ruin the fragile illusion.

With his eyes open, the black seemed endless; the darkness, heavy and pulsating around him as some sort of sentient being, intent on the slow, deliberate destruction of anything within its reach, anything fed to it by the Dragon. And Jaime was her latest offering-the Kingslayer. The Oathbreaker. The Man without Honor. Another word, another name, flashed in his mind, flickering briefly before he pushed it down and silently assured himself nothing had been there in the first place.

When he had first regained consciousness after the Targaryen siege, Jaime thought he must have died. Waking up in the Black Cells had been an entirely confusing and unpleasant event. So much nothingness had to be death, he remembered thinking. The reality of the situation had not been even a possibility in his mind, but after a few hours (or had it been a few days?) it began to make a certain amount of sense. Daenerys had been born at Dragonstone after Rhaella had escaped the capitol, he recalled. This conqueror Queen from across the Narrow Sea had never before set foot in King's Landing. She had never seen the throne she'd killed to sat upon, the so-called birthright that she had claimed with fire and blood. Jaime had thought she would settle in soon enough and send for him. Or at least for his head. Only she hadn't.

Sleep became a means to pass time as he awaited the Dragon Queen's inevitable call. However, as time moved on in his endless night and still the call did not come, the difference between waking and sleeping became harder to distinguish. Jaime felt his mind turning against him. In the black there were no distractions. Nothing to hear but his deepest thoughts. Nothing to see but his most secret memories.

He had tried to forget. He had tried to go away, somewhere deep inside, hiding in his own mind. He could almost do it. He could almost imagine he was someone else, somewhere else. Miles away. Years before. In a home he barely remembered. Chasing after a beautiful little girl, blond and bold, always more daring than he, always pushing him to do more, to be braver.

Jaime had lived in those memories when he'd served the Mad King, hiding away in the solace of his youth. So he hid as Queen Rhaella had screamed when Aerys tore into her chambers and then into her. As Rickard Stark had burned, the gold on his spurs melting first. As Brandon Stark had choked himself trying to save his father. Through it all, until the end when the enormity of it all had proven too much, Jaime had been able to separate himself from the reality of what happened around him.

Now, here in the Black Cells, he tried to do the same thing. When he closed his eyes, he could almost slip away...almost.

But the memories he tried to slip into, what were they? Was there any part of them that had been real? Had Cersei ever really been who he'd thought she was? Had she ever been the girl he'd given up Casterly Rock for, the woman he'd given up everything for?

Jaime kept his eyes closed and tried to find the truth of it in his heart. How long had he served a monster? Answering her every request, following her every order. The things he'd done for love. Killing, murdering. Without question. Had he really loved the monster in her? Had he created the monster?

The Sept of Baelor had smoldered still as Jaime returned from the Riverlands, the tall plumes of black smoke spiraling up into the sky. Tommen, their last child, had taken his own life, and Cersei had taken his crown. She had claimed the Iron Throne, beautiful in her newfound power, glorious and terrible to behold. Jaime had wanted to kill her then, the feeling sudden and fleeting but overwhelming in its intensity. He had known then that the bond between them had been severed.

This newly made queen was not his sister. She wasn't the same girl who had held him in her arms as he'd told her of the Mad King's sins. She wasn't the lover who had kissed the tears from his cheeks as he'd told her what the fire had done; the smell of it, the sound of it. That girl had wept with him, the tears falling like rain from green eyes so like his own. But she was gone, that girl. They were not one person anymore. Cersei was not his other half; she was a stranger to him.

Jaime had known they'd grown apart. As far back as when he'd dared to be captured by Robb Stark, he'd known it. He'd felt the separation. And when he'd had the audacity to lose a hand? Cersei had never forgiven him for it. For being unable to blindly follow her every command, unable to be her personal assassin, unable to commit the atrocities necessary for her to grasp power in her own name.

Unable?

Yes, Jaime answered his own silent question. Unable. Especially when he'd first returned to her, feeling less than half a man without his sword hand. Unable.

But his heart, or whatever was left of it, whispered another word.

Unwilling.

She'd killed so many, burned so many. Jaime had no trouble imagining the screams of the Tyrells, of their cousin Lancel, of their uncle Kevan, even of the High Sparrow. He had no trouble imagining the smell of their burning flesh as the green flames consumed them. In his mind, he could see the skin melting and turning to ash in the same breath. Margery's skin. Cersei might as well have killed Tommen herself, but she remained somehow unaffected, shedding no tears as she took the throne.

She had been unflinching as she planned the defense of the city against the incoming Targaryen attack. Jaime had tried to reason with her, urging her to surrender. He had pleaded with her. Please, for him. Please, if she'd ever held any love for him at all.

 _Please_ , he'd begged.

 _Please_.

 _Burn them all_ , she'd said as her only response.

Jaime tried to stop his thoughts. He had no desire to relive it again, but he knew it was beyond his control, especially here in the black, here in the void where there was nothing to stop it. Thoughts or dreams, memories or nightmares. He couldn't tell from one moment to the next.

Jaime knew it mattered not. Asleep or awake, the images would come just the same. Memories he had tried to forget. Thoughts he had tried to ignore. Nightmares he had tried to reshape in his mind. But they were always there.

He could see them coming for him even now, images flashing in the darkness.

Emerald eyes, opened wide and bulging in panicked shock.

A golden hand pressed firmly against a feminine throat.

Long fingernails clawing uselessly against metallic flesh.

Cersei had trusted him. She hadn't thought him capable of betraying her, not even as the end neared, not even when she'd been the one begging, her pleas silent as she struggled for breath.

The one mercy of his memories had been that they had stopped short of her actual death, of her falling limp as she must have. But each time the visions came, they went a little farther. Each time Jaime could see in her eyes more and more of the growing realization of his betrayal.

As he lay on the stone floor, the darkness of the Black Cells thick and suffocating, Jaime knew that he would see it all this time, that the memory would show him what he'd tried so hard to deny.

He prayed to all the gods he could think of.

 _Make it stop. Make it stop. Don't make me watch her die again. Don't make me kill her again._

But Jaime didn't believe in the gods. Not any of them, and even if they were real, they weren't listening. Not to him.

Kingslayer.

Oathbreaker.

The words echoed in his head as he continued looking into his sister's eyes, no longer much resembling his own as hers grew impossibly larger still, red veins erupting across the white.

Man without honor.

Still he pressed his cold, golden hand against her throat, the throat his lips had tasted a thousand times, the throat he longed for still.

Kinslayer.

His sister's face, his lover's face darkened from a deep red tinged with blue to a true purple.

Jaime tried to face the memory bravely. He had been brave in battle all his life. But this was different. This was worse. A thousand times worse.

Then it happened.

With tears streaming down his cheeks, both in the past and in the present, Jaime watched as Cersei stopped clawing at him, her body seeming to relax. Her eyes remained open but were unfocused and lifeless, vacant in their stare.

Jaime could not move. His hand remained against her throat, still pressed tight and pushing her against the throne, the only thing keeping her body upright.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

For a moment, Jaime thought someone was in the Black Cells with him. But no. The hand was in the past, part of the nightmare, part of his memory. Its weight was gentle against him, and he made no response to it at first, his attention still only on Cersei. Then another hand on his other shoulder. Small hands with a soft touch, but they were pulling him away from the throne, away from Cersei, with increasing firmness.


End file.
